Saturday, April 2, 2011

Recently, in a post, I mused about the old manual typewriters I grew up with, and, as I'm sure it did for many of you, it put me in mind of my sex education. Not the segment of it I got from the gutter as God, and certainly, Mom intended, which was fascinating, far-fetched and turned out to be true, but the part I got from Mom. I was nine years old and she was typing out my application for summer camp. She could navigate those forms like nobody's business, barely pausing to readjust the paper so that the typing fit precisely in the little boxes. Her fingers were a blur, and then suddenly she stopped dead, turned to me and said, Mary, do you know what menstruation is?

Well, no. But I could tell by her expression that I probably should, and that I wasn't going to like it.

She then gave me an entirely inadequate explanation that was no explanation at all--just a description, really, and no making sense of the thing. It sounded like a perfectly horrible prospect with no real purpose (and that is, indeed, what it turned out to be), and when she finished with do you understand? I lied and said "yes," hoping it would end the lesson, and it did. She whipped back around to the typewriter, typed three letters in the box, and then rolled down to the next box.

Sisters, post- and pre-puberty: note levels of joy.

There you have it: Part One of my sex education. Let's review. I cannot remember exactly how she transmitted the key information about the bleeding into the underwear region. It had to have been some delicate phrasing; we went years (nine years, at that point) without referring to anything between anyone's legs. Or anything that ever happened or might sometime happen in that neighborhood. Even the phrases "number one" and "number two" were strictly street terminology. We used "piddle," when necessary, and that's as far as it went.

So however she put it, my memory went into the self-cleaning cycle right away, and the words are lost to history. I got the gist. Some day soon some dreadful new hygiene issue would develop in my underwear, and it was completely natural and expected, and when it happened I should come to her for Part Two, additional information and supplies. Why this revolting development should occur, as well as where babies came from and even came out of, were details I was expected to scrounge elsewhere.

So the day it happened, I went and told Mom, and she smiled and promised to "fix me up" and went to her closet, where she had a sanitary napkin all rigged up on a brand new belt for me, and--aiming for levity--she told me to come to her with any questions because she was an expert. It was excruciating. I took the item into the bathroom with me and never asked her another thing. This was just one more horrible aspect of getting older, among many that were surfacing at the time.

The next day at school I did have a momentary lift and the sense of having joined the maturity club when I asked to be marked down for a "sponge bath" in gym, but that was it for high points. Everything else about the situation sucked. The napkin felt like a mattress before it got compressed into an inadequate narrow log, and the act of walking tended to make it migrate to the rear where it wasn't really needed, and away from where it was. I developed the tactic of nonchalantly backing into the corner of a desk, as if resting, to reposition the thing, a solution that needed repeating every thirty steps or so. Various innovations improved the situation over the years, but there was really no shining it up.

In the seventies it became fashionable to celebrate anything related to being female. Restrictive underwear was discarded, sometimes publicly, pronouns were redeployed, vibrator sales were humming, and, in some quarters, it was considered liberating to celebrate one's menses as the source of some kind of mythic goddess power. Drape yourself in purple, doll up your shrine, maybe do a taste test.

I was no prude. There's photos to prove it. I tried, but you can't polish a turd into a pearl. My friend Linda, who is a mother and in whose life there was at least some point to this disgusting event, once hiked with me on beautiful Mt. Hood. Not that it wasn't a splendid day with much to be excited about, but I was startled to see her chatting away on the trail with her hand down her pants. "What are you doing?" I asked.

The entire revolting process lurched and skidded to a halt a few years ago for me. It was forty years of pointlessness and laundry. Nothing changed my initial impression of it when I was nine. I guess Mom did a good job communicating after all.

69 comments:

Your mama seems to have been rather more informative than mine. And our family doctor (male natch) told me that women liked getting their periods because, wait for it, 'it reassures them that they are women'. I would have been about thirteen then, and knew with every fibre of my being that he was talking crap. And I was right.

Oops first comment disappeared. I am sitting here with tears of laughter streaming. That was too funny and dead on. This is a post only women of a certain age can appreciate. Today's youngsters at least know via TV what those "wings" are for and Oprah has filled in the rest. Moms have it easy today. Thanks for such a fun belly laugh.

Thanks again for my morning chuckle. As a boy, such knowledge was forbidden for me. In fact, anything bodily was a taboo subject. We used "wee-wee" for number one and "grunt" for number two (descriptive, don't you think?), but all else was off limits. I think the openness of today is much better, but it's fun to reminisce.

My information started in our barnyard with my older sister and a complete misunderstanding of the word period. I thought she was talkin' punctuation. My God, this is funny. I am sooo glad that part of my life is over. It has turned into a true men-o-pause, but maybe that's just temporary. Love your conclusion. It's going to be a good weekend. I can tell. Thank you, Murr.

When I first learned that girls had to contend with such a messy situation...I just didn't want to hear anymore. Right then and there I figured out that if I were ever given the improbable choice of becoming a girl, I would definitely turn it down.

For some reason my mother wanted to keep me in the dark. I endlessly whined and begged her to take me to my 6th grade maturation program. Finally out of shear desperation she pushed me onto a stool and growled, "You're gonna bleed. Your armpits are gonna get hairy and you'll have to shave -- you're gonna HATE shaving. You'll have to bathe more and use deodorant ..."

It was ugly. I had already learned more than that from my friends ... I just wanted the damn punch and cookies. And a rose petal sachet for my underwear drawer.

I would NEVER miss one of your posts, Murr, and this one proves the reason for it. In a bit of a hurry, I scanned it and then went to the top and read it carefully, laughing or grimacing the entire time. Perfectly stated and the reminders of those days, now a distant memory, came rushing back. Thank you again and again!

Oh, I dreaded it and then as one by one all my girlfriends got it I wondered if I was ever going to get it. finally, the last one. went running to tell my mother. she couldn't be bothered. get you sister to help you, she said. it was left to a younger neighbor to clue me into tampons.

A full year before we watched that 'special film' in 5th grade that required a permission slip and materials secreted in a plain brown wrapper, I remember wringing the information out of my sister (five years my senior) because I was tired of watching frustratingly vague commercials showing ballet dancers pirouetting across a calendar with asterisks on certain days (what the hell is THAT? A VACATION? WHAT??) and squinting at the machines in the ladies room, as if the reason and purpose of those products was in the fine print under the '25c' sticker. She gave me a hilariously outdated pamphlet she'd gotten in school that I wish I still had. I can only describe it as 'Gidget's Aunt Flo comes for a visit....and stays thirty five years'.

You simply MUST read the short story, "Even the Queen," by SF writer Connie Willis. A kindred spirit if ever there was one.My late mother (born in 1911) told me of her disappointment and frustration as a little girl when her mother refused to buy "sanitary napkins" for her. Mother saw the labels and thought they must be MUCH more special than the plain ol' napkins at the dinner table! Of course, her mother wouldn't tell her what "sanitary" napkins were.

Ah, yes, the pamphlet entitled "It's Wonderful Being a Girl". Pink and purple with a cute little girl wearing a filmy dress and lots of flowers. Gah! Even at 11 years old, I knew it was pure bull. And the mattress? Always in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And if you were really lucky (not), you could get a tender portion of your anatomy caught in those vicious metal-toothed clips on the belt. Yikes. Don't make any sudden moves.

I remember feeling so modern when I switched to the belt that had the safer plastic clip instead. Ooooo, progress.

Man, I don't remember any special classes in fifth grade. In eighth grade we had some lectures from the gym teacher. I only remember the part about "your parents don't want you going in to D.C. at night because there is a black market in white women." Jeez, how old AM I?

Well, not so old as to have had bits-eatin' metal sproingers on my sanitary belt. I think it was plastic. No wait--couldn't have been. It hadn't been invented. Unless they made doo-dads out of Bakelite.

We didn't have anything in school, but my Campfire Girls group (club? den? what WERE we?) in 5th grade had a presentation at one of our meetings. It was either a filmstrip (remember them?) or a film, plus little booklets put out by Modess ("rhymes with 'Oh-Yes'"). A little corporate, perhaps, but a much better explanation than we might have received otherwise.

I have no idea about my younger siblings including my sister but Mom knew I read EVERYTHING that came into the house. One of the magazines she subscribed to was Chatelaine which in the 50's was an excellent publication (still is) filled with educational articles. She never had to tell me the facts of life. She let me read it.

I was an "early bloomer" God help me - 11 years old I think. I don't remember my conversation with mom, but I remember her taking me around to all the female relatives to announce that I was a woman now (and that seems REALLY weird to me now). My great grandmother, a prissy lady who sold Mary Kay, told me that I couldn't take a bath until it was all finished. Really? Blech!

We did have a film in school - they separated boys & girls for the event thank goodness. I was all smug because I was already a "woman" when we saw it. But, yes, 36 years of a useless monthly event & apparently I'm not done yet. Sigh.

Dinner table, Sunday night, enitre family gathered around brother, 2 sisters, (all older) me (at 8) and Mom and Dad. Dad launched into a lesson for all three girls, complete with a little booklet put out by some pharmaceutical company.Girls will produce eggs and a nest. Boys will try to fertilize the egg, and the egg will become a human being. And come out the girl's vagina. And if that doesn't happen, she will slough off her nest, and this will happen every month for the next 40 years or so.Dad was a pharmacist, and this was the thoroughly modern dinner tale -that I rushed to tell all my friends, then got in major trouble for as one by one, their parents called my parents to complain! Dad never ever mentioned it again until the day before I was to marry, and he asked if I was on the pill....duh.daaaad.

Tears of laughter here too, Murr! I was a late bleeder, so I had the benefit of all my early starting girlfriends (whom I envied, but not for long) being able to tell me what it was all about, filling in the gaps of what my mother told me. Oh, she left out few details, and was ready with a supply kit including belt and safety pins as feminine products were in transition at the time - maybe I was just in denial that it could all be true and would remain true for decades. What was always called The Curse in my household never got any less so with the years. I'm not done yet, and the whole thing has proven utterly inessential, so expect a party when The Curse makes it final underpants appearance. If it weren't for superior orgasmic potential, it would really really suck to be a girl!

One day in 6th grade, all the girls were taken out of my class and moved to a neighboring classroom. The boys from that class were ushered into ours. We were all a bit perplexed; a classroom of all boys? Before long the 16mm projector was wheeled into the room. When the lights went dark, we boys were shown an industrial film about how Bauxite is mined manufactured into Aluminum. It was pretty cool. Still, questions remained about why girls were deemed unworthy of knowing the secrets of Aluminum manufacturing… and what exactly what could possibly be going on in the girls’ only class? At recess we pressed the girls to reveal the secret. They instead nervously laughed and ran away. After school, I told my Mother about the the mysterious event of the school’s gender-distinct instruction. Mother then explained what the girls had learned. Oops

As a boy, I knew that this was something "that happened to girls", but it wasn't until jr. high school that I realized that this was really "happening" to *girls that I actually knew*. And by then, I think that us guys assumed that everybody had converted over to more modern technology. So after reading your hilarious posting, I now have renewed sympathy for every gal I grew up with -- belts, clips, pins? Eeeew! I thought that was strictly for our mothers' generation.

Murr, I must also share with you two random memories that relate to the topic at hand....once, when the topic came up in a mixed group of teenagers, our friend Laurie M** rendered everyone speechless by casually shrugging and saying something like, "Heck, I throw in two 'Supers', and just keep on going." All the guys exchanged glances that said "What does THAT mean?"And the second item is that our friend Marianne K** would euphemistically refer to her feminine products as "pontoons" instead of 'tampons'....and to this day, I still chuckle to myself whenever I walk down that aisle in the grocery store.....Your writing is wonderful, and I'm constantly amazed at the fab pictures you have from long ago.....

You campers were luckier going off to camp than one of my charges, who didn't have a clue when it happened to her. Imagine: no mother around, no old friends around, fear of dying. That's when a counselor needs to be a darn good one, and I hope I was.

Great post, as usual. And here I thought it would be about manual typewriters. The sum total of my mother's wisdom to me of such things was: Bad girls have babies. Seriously. I thought shoplifting meant I would get pregnant. Zero about menstruation. I started at age 14 at summer camp. The other girls filled me in.

Well thank you Murr for giving me some extra educational material to share with my daughter. However I was not quite counting on sharing "superior orgasmic potential" just yet. Need to preview before I share!! Ha ha...

Hilarious! Don't you love those euphemisms that went with it? The Merry Monthly, On the Rag, The Curse, etc,I did go to summer camp and it did choose to start there! I don't know if that question was on the application or not.

Oh, my. Mom gave me slightly less information, with a lot more embarrassment than yours. And the belt, when adhesives on pads, and tampons, were quite available. I didn't even tell her the first few times, and then she just sent away for the box from the brand-name®, and handed it to me for the next time. Wound up spending my allowance on tampons, swallowing my own shame just to save some of my clothes from the stains. I was only ten years old, really not up to the task.

Useless indeed, I always knew I never wanted children, and I never have. And I still haven't stopped this process. Feh.

A bit of pragmatism and resignation at the start would really have helped, I think.

My mom handed me a booklet with a picture of a pony-tailed girl in jeans. I always wanted a pony-tail. And jeans. So I agreed to the whole thing. A few months later, when I found myself chewing the corner of an area rug to handle the pain (I thought everybody hurt that much and I was a pain weenie), I discovered there was no do-over on that agreement. Totally trashed the concept of a loving god for me.

When I was like 8 I got an entire lecture on eggs and Fallopian tubes... I just nodded and nodded so my mom would stop talking. The summer after 5th grade she kept saying,"You're going to get your period this summer!" And I did on an airplane ride to my aunt's house with just my little sister! Oh, the horror of my aunt and uncle helping through my first time! Yes- my uncle, because aunt told him everything!

I think my mom had "the talk" with me when I was about nine, although I was almost 14 when I finally "started" (at school). Oh, the belts with the Kotex...what a lovely memory...NOT! I hope that I'm coming down the home stretch of being done with this chore...

Ah, yes... I remember it well. When I first got the retched curse, my mom had to blab about it to my aunts like it was some graduate degree to celebrate. Fortunately, it arrived late and left early. You can even make a subject like this interesting and funny.

Now please get Disqus so we can all talk to each other, too. It will be fun. I promise.

Huh. Well, I thank you kindly for the insight into what we used to call women's health issues. My own sex education consisted of a single question and answer with my reticent mother and completely silent father:

I hate to be disagreeable (and NO, it is not PMS thank you very much!) but even you can't make me laugh about this subject. And my mother was fairly straight forward and informative about the whole thing in a timely manner. She even encouraged me to "get the hang" of tampons early on. "You'll never go back to the other things." I learned to live with it until it went away, but I never learned to see the humor in it. Thanks for trying, though.

OMG....spot on...pun intended! I roared laughing out loud...my son thought I might be having convulsions. Your description of the sanitary napkin was perfect...absolutely hilarious!! Thanks for stopping in at Maggie's garden today...I'm grateful because it lead me to YOU. Most appreciative for the belly laughs. See ya soon.

Great post, as usual. And here I thought it would be about manual typewriters. The sum total of my mother's wisdom to me of such things was: Bad girls have babies. Seriously. I thought shoplifting meant I would get pregnant. Zero about menstruation. I started at age 14 at summer camp. The other girls filled me in.

As a boy, I knew that this was something "that happened to girls", but it wasn't until jr. high school that I realized that this was really "happening" to *girls that I actually knew*. And by then, I think that us guys assumed that everybody had converted over to more modern technology. So after reading your hilarious posting, I now have renewed sympathy for every gal I grew up with -- belts, clips, pins? Eeeew! I thought that was strictly for our mothers' generation.

Tears of laughter here too, Murr! I was a late bleeder, so I had the benefit of all my early starting girlfriends (whom I envied, but not for long) being able to tell me what it was all about, filling in the gaps of what my mother told me. Oh, she left out few details, and was ready with a supply kit including belt and safety pins as feminine products were in transition at the time - maybe I was just in denial that it could all be true and would remain true for decades. What was always called The Curse in my household never got any less so with the years. I'm not done yet, and the whole thing has proven utterly inessential, so expect a party when The Curse makes it final underpants appearance. If it weren't for superior orgasmic potential, it would really really suck to be a girl!

I was an "early bloomer" God help me - 11 years old I think. I don't remember my conversation with mom, but I remember her taking me around to all the female relatives to announce that I was a woman now (and that seems REALLY weird to me now). My great grandmother, a prissy lady who sold Mary Kay, told me that I couldn't take a bath until it was all finished. Really? Blech!

We did have a film in school - they separated boys & girls for the event thank goodness. I was all smug because I was already a "woman" when we saw it. But, yes, 36 years of a useless monthly event & apparently I'm not done yet. Sigh.

We didn't have anything in school, but my Campfire Girls group (club? den? what WERE we?) in 5th grade had a presentation at one of our meetings. It was either a filmstrip (remember them?) or a film, plus little booklets put out by Modess ("rhymes with 'Oh-Yes'"). A little corporate, perhaps, but a much better explanation than we might have received otherwise.

Oh, I dreaded it and then as one by one all my girlfriends got it I wondered if I was ever going to get it. finally, the last one. went running to tell my mother. she couldn't be bothered. get you sister to help you, she said. it was left to a younger neighbor to clue me into tampons.

Your mama seems to have been rather more informative than mine. And our family doctor (male natch) told me that women liked getting their periods because, wait for it, 'it reassures them that they are women'. I would have been about thirteen then, and knew with every fibre of my being that he was talking crap. And I was right.